How many mistakes is acceptable?

[jamato]

When the nurses received the wrong units, did they file incidents reports? That could be used as part of your documentation.

I had an employee whose work was similar to this person, she was gone in less than a month but I had documentation.

Question are you a co-worker or a lead?

[jcoburn]

Any scientist who falsifies results, even once, will not work for me. That instance should be documented and if substantiated is grounds for immediate dismissal. No amount of training or retraining can correct character flaws. Dishonesty cannot be tolerated on any level in the laboratory (hey, we're not lawyers or politicians) the blood bank should be especially scrupulous in this matter, but you don't have to know blood bank to manage this type of personnel problem.

[RoseM]

What is your policy on assessing staff competency? You have to set your own standards. In our institution, we would do remedial training, verbal warning, and finally termination especially if patient is harmed or there is a potential to harm the patient. Document the errors and work with your HR.

[Elizabeth Pailloz]

Back to the original post......What shall BronxBommer do?

My advice is simply to print this thread and slide it under the doors of the non-acting parties involved . You may want to add a note that states that this is what the blood banking community thinks....:cool:

Then exile them from the Island...LOL.

[ybunch]

One of my sons is a commercial airline pilot. I asked him what would happen if he did not follow a protocol. The first time, there would be a discussion to make sure he understood the protocol. If it continued to happen, he would be pulled off the line, brought back to flight school for remedial training. Once on the line again, if it happened again, he would be fired. All of this would be carefully documented for the union. Customer safety has to be of prime importance. Perhaps your HR does not understand how serious this can be and the liability involved. Your legal department should be informed of the problem. I would also recommend you review your training. I highly recommend the book Checklist Manifesto, written by a Harvard Physician. Aviation uses checklists. This has led to a safer industry. The adoption of checklists in surgery has greatly reduced mortality and infection when used correctly. Do you have a checklist for the techs to use? If you go on the World Health Organization website, (WHO) they have an example of surgical checklists that are well done. Also the New England Journal of Medicine carried an article on development of check list. They can be applied in every industry and increases safety. Hope this helps:)

[jcoburn]

As many have stated, mistakes happen. I still contend that the dishonesty purported in the original question cannot be tolerated. No manager worth his salt would sit still for staff falsifying results. That is not a mistake, but a deliberate action. The person should be brought up before whatever review board has certified this person's competency so that his/her license can be revoked.

[KE4JC]

As a manager/supervisor, we must make sure we look at each error same way regardless of the person involved. we can not look at tjhe error with any bias. If yuo want to creat a department where yiu want to have a respect from every one, do not look at any one with the eye of...I like this person, i don't like this person etc.

I think this is the most important thing we have to learn as a manager and....YES some time it is difficult but if you are treating everyone equally, no one will mind you finding their errors.

Absolutely. I left a bad situation where I was the lead tech for dayshift in a hospital blood bank. We had trained a new night shift tech for the scheduled three weeks in blood bank, after which the blood bank supervisor and I both thought he needed an additional week of training. The lab manager (incidently a close friend of said new tech) overrode us and insisted that he was desperately needed on nights and therefore had to be "passed" to work in blood bank.

For the next two years (!!!) at least two or three times a month he would accept a mislabelled specimen and crossmatch and issue blood on it. When I first said something to him about the importance of correct labelling, he went to the manager and told her that I shouldn't be telling him what to do since I was not his supervisor. When the supervisor talked to him about coming back to dayshift for the additional training he convinced his friend the manager that he could do the retraining on his own at night (yeah, right), but continued to make the same mistake over and over (and over...). The supervisor asked me to document with an incident report every time I found one, and I did - even submitted several BPDRs to the FDA.

Nothing was ever done to discipline the tech, however... when I called in one day when my car wouldn't start, and was told by the supervisor that I didn't need to come in because she had coverage that day, the following week the manager informed me that my attendance was unacceptable (I had worked there for 7 1/2 years with excellent reviews and it was my first call off EVER) and I was being dismissed. (This was the manager who had asked me to falsify safety documentation, and also that when I told her about a process that was being used was against CFR made me talk to the hospital lawyer and get an AABB assessor to agree with me before she believed it even though I showed her the regulation in print.)

I don't mind being told I've made an error if I have (and yes, I have), but allowing that kind of favoritism to possibly harm a patient (which it will eventually, I'm sure) is absurd in my book.

Kathy E,

MT(ASCP)SBB

:eek:

[Brenda K Hutson]

Back to the original post......What shall BronxBommer do?

My advice is simply to print this thread and slide it under the doors of the non-acting parties involved . You may want to add a note that states that this is what the blood banking community thinks....:cool:

Then exile them from the Island...LOL.

Better yet, slide it under the door of a Hospital Administrator!

Brenda Hutson

[Deny Morlino]

Slide a copy to the hospital's legal counsel too. Just be prepared with the smelling salts for when they pass out!

[dmyers]

This is truly a sad story to read about. It seems that until a fatality occurs, nothing will be done. There is some very very sound advice provided here, simply be cautious.